


Stranger Things (That Happened)

by josephina_x



Series: Being Adopted is Easy, It's -Life- That's Hard! [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 02:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/555905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Jonathan showed him the Ship, Clark didn't just run to the graveyard woods and skulk around there all day. He ran to someplace else that he'd always known to be deserted -- the castle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranger Things (That Happened)

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Stranger Things (That Happened)  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: G  
> Spoilers: AU, diverges during Pilot episode (1x01)  
> Word count: 11,400+  
> Summary: After Jonathan showed him the Ship, Clark didn't just run to the graveyard woods and skulk around there all day. He ran to someplace else that he'd always known to be deserted -- the castle.  
> Warnings: n/a  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: The timeline is sped up just a tad -- Clark gets the truck the same afternoon as the bridge collision, not the next day.
> 
> For the [smallvillebbang](http://smallvillebbang.livejournal.com) 2012 Challenge. Beta'd by the awesome [twinsarein](http://twinsarein.livejournal.com), and art by the wonderful [elenarain](http://elenarain.livejournal.com)!
> 
> Her art post is [here](http://elenarain.livejournal.com/51414.html)! (There are a lot more goodies where this banner came from!)

[](http://s1247.photobucket.com/albums/gg634/josephina_x/sv-bb-2012/?action=view&current=LJBanner.jpg)

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark didn't want to be around anyone, right then.

Maybe not ever again.

He wasn't just some freak, he was an _alien_ freak.

Sent to Earth in a spaceship as a kid, and, god, where were his real parents?

...Oh fuck, did he actually just think that? Because his mom and dad--

\--weren't his mom and dad at all, and he'd known _that_ , known he'd been adopted, but--

_They lied to me._

_Why didn't they tell me?_

Dad -- Jonathan -- Dad had said that they'd been protecting him, but that meant lying and hiding from everybody else. And that meant telling the truth to each other. ...At least, Clark had thought that was what it had meant. He was always supposed to tell the truth to them, tell them at the first sign that something might be wrong, every time he screwed up -- and, boy, did he screw up a lot -- but now that he thought about it...

Wanting to protect him... --That didn't explain why they'd lied to _him_ , why they'd told _him_ they didn't know anything about his parents, every time he'd ever asked.

 _What were you protecting me from?_ But he hadn't stuck around long enough for an answer. He'd been too afraid to find out.

 _I'm dangerous. A dangerous alien freak. I shouldn't be around people._ His dad didn't trust him to be on the football team, to even sit on the bench all season long, just being near the other kids. The _human_ sons of his dad's high school buddies and friends. His mom always smiled and listened, but cautioned him to never stick out. He wasn't supposed to catch anybody's attention. He was supposed to just 'hang in there' -- _until when?!_ \-- and things would get better -- _how?!_ \--

...except things weren't ever going to get any better, now, were they? He wasn't even human. That wasn't something he could close his eyes and hope and pray that he might grow out of, someday.

Clark shivered as he paced the edge of the graveyard treeline, and not from the cold. From time to time he skulked among the gravestones, feeling like maybe he could hide in death, somehow. That would be poetic, right? Lose himself in a cemetery at midnight, steeped in darkness and death, learning to become a shade that no-one would ever notice... that _was_ what his parents really wanted, wasn't it? The perfect disguise for him -- a ghost no-one would ever see, that no-one could hear or touch...

\--except he was already pretty untouchable, wasn't he? Got hit by a car, and that didn't even slow him down.

 _Could_ he even die?

Was he really that inhuman?

...Did he even _have_ a soul?

Clark stopped where he stood and glanced around at the gravestones, suddenly feeling both really wired, like he was going to jump out of his skin at any moment, and really tired, like he could just collapse where he was and never move or think or breathe ever again.

 _Now I lay me down to sleep..._ He felt a mad giggle coming on and quashed it.

Clark shivered again and wrapped his arms around his midriff, squeezing -- something he could feel -- himself, if nothing else.

And then his head snapped up at a noise. _That didn't sound like the wind..._

Clark stood in place and shivered, and then slowly, carefully walked towards the low murmuring he was hearing. He quietly crept around monuments and gravestone markers, and stopped behind the statue of an angel. He carefully glanced around the side of it. Clark suddenly felt sick.

Someone was kneeling among the gravestones in his graveyard.

... _His_ graveyard?

Clark shook his head and tried to swallow down the feeling of having been nearby a person -- a human being, who his dad thought he might hurt, _he needed to stay away_ \-- without even realizing it. And then he realized something else as the sick feeling got worse and worse. _I'm pretty much out in the open right now,_ and the cemetery was open to everybody in town. _He knew this._ There wasn't even a high wall around the boundary, like some of those books and TV shows -- just a really short wire fence that people could practically step over, and that was just by the gate at the drive-in entrance...

 _Oh god, people could see me from the road..._ he realized, backing up a step, and immediately feeling a little better as he did so. _I need to get back to the trees._ The woods at least afforded a little coverage. Why had he left them? So he could walk among a bunch of rotting corpses under bits of rock and grass, dirt and stone? He backed up another step, back behind the momument, and he felt a wave of relief pass through him.

His boot snapped on a twig.

"Wh--?" he heard, and his heart jumped up and got stuck in his throat.

He was out of there before the person's voice really registered. He didn't know who it was, and, honestly, he didn't want to know.

Because if he didn't know who it was, then they couldn't have recognized him either.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He stopped a mile into the cemetery woods, that were really just the woods bordering the south end of the town, now.

It was getting dark, and Clark didn't actually want to be outdoors this late at night, but he couldn't go home. He really couldn't.

He'd almost been caught once already, and he didn't want to have that discussion with his parents -- Jon and M-- his mom and dad tonight, on top of everything else that had happened that day.

The lump in his throat got harder to breathe around, and his vision fogged.

Clark ground his palms into his eyes with an under-his-breath mutter, furious with himself. He _refused_ to acknowledge the burning prickle he felt in them.

He took a few gasping breaths of air as dark, desperate thoughts whirled and swirled through his mind. Where could he go? He couldn't go home.

...Oh, geez, where _could_ he go?

Pete -- no. Not this late at night. And Mrs. Judge Ross would take one look at him and call his parents. Just, no.

Chloe?

Clark ended up bent over from the wheezing hysteria that shook through his frame, because, yeah. Good one. He'd have to be out of his mind to ever think of going to her! She'd want to know what was up, and she'd never let it go, and if **she** _ever_ found out...

...

Clark realized that he'd just run out of friends. He didn't have anyone else.

_Not that I'm supposed to be around normal **human** people right now anyway. Ever again._

And then it hit Clark in a flash. Where he could go, that no-one would be. That no-one ever was.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark sighed a little in relief as he carefully squeezed between the gates. After all, there was no sense in him jumping the stone wall and leaving deep footprints in the earth -- not when he could just bend the bars of the gates wide open, slide through, and then bend them back again with no-one ever the wiser and nothing to mark his passage. He slowly walked up the road towards the castle, gravel quietly crunching under his boots.

He tried the front door and found it unlocked. It creaked a little as he let himself in.

A little shiver ran its way down Clark's spine as he closed the door behind him. The muffled thump that echoed throughout the large medieval-esque mansion had him catching and holding his breath.

When no-one immediately appeared to yell at him for trespassing, Clark quietly laughed at himself a little. He was being silly. No-one was here. No-one had ever been here.

No-one ever would be. Clark sure as hell wasn't, because he was learning to be a ghost, right? Ghosts didn't count.

And this actually seemed like a pretty good place to haunt.

Clark wondered for the first time why he'd never come here before.

_Because this is private property, I'm breaking and entering, and I always do what I'm told._

And lawbreaking brings attention.

...Well, getting caught at it, anyway.

Clark carefully made his way down the hallway through the house, hyper-aware that there wasn't much light, and what was still left, struggling to shine through the sheet-covered windows, was steadily getting dimmer as the sun finished vanishing over the horizon. While the mansion was deserted, with dropclothes thrown over what little was there, there was still some furniture and things that were there, and 'little' didn't mean 'nothing'.

 _Don't break anything you can't fix, and don't touch anything you can break. If you can help it._ And he couldn't; not always.

Clark sighed as he reached a set of double doors. _A big foyer with a couch, maybe?_ He could only hope.

Clark pulled open the set of doors and winced at a sound that never came.

 _Huh,_ he thought, stepping in and letting the doors glide shut. That had been smooth -- no squeaking, or creaking -- like it had been oiled recentl--

Clark looked up and stared at the fire in the fireplace. His eyes widened, because--

 _ **That** hadn't been there before..._ Clark hadn't seen any light at all coming from the windows earlier, and--

Clark suddenly had an odd feeling like a prickling at the back of his neck, and he spun around to see a dark shape lunging at him with something wickedly-sharp--

He backpedaled quickly, no time to bring up his hands in surrender or defense, panicking and not even sure what he could do against--

His back slammed into the wall, arms and palms flattening out and away from his sides, his heart hammering as the point speared lightning-fast towards his face--

And came to an abrupt halt, right in front of his nose. The point wavered.

Clark uncrossed his eyes from the point so near his face and started to follow it back to source.

Poker.

Fire poker. Black wrought iron.

Hand.

And...

"...Kent?"

Clark's eyes widened further. Apparently he wasn't the only one panting for breath and looking entirely freaked out.

"M-Mr. Luthor?" Clark asked weakly, though it really shouldn't have been a question.

He saw Lex Luthor blink at him, his face lit in half-relief, darkly illuminated by the firelight's wavering glow.

He did not look happy.

The point of the poker wavered slightly again, then went rock-steady, zeroed in on him like... Clark stopped moving and held himself very, very still.

He saw Mr. Luthor take a steadying breath, compose himself, and pull the poker back away from him a foot or two, to a less menacing chest-high level. At the ready still, but not exactly wary -- no, everything about Mr. Luthor's posture, his presence, radiated confidence. He stared at Clark, face unreadable now, and all-in-all the guy looked distinctly unapproachable.

Clark blinked back at him and let out a very slow breath, not really feeling comfortable enough to unplaster himself from the wall. He didn't even let his eyes flicker over to the double doors, telling himself it would probably be a bad idea to just bolt, because Mr. Luthor obviously knew -- remembered -- who he was. He could just go talk to his parents and...

Oh. Crap. Luthor Manor. --But they'd never lived here before; _nobody_ had! He hadn't thought Mr. Luthor was staying _in town...!_

Holy hell. He was in _so_ much trouble.

"I'm sorry!" Clark blurted out. "I'm sorry! I thought--"

"You thought what?" Mr. Luthor asked coolly.

"I thought--" Clark swallowed hard, then started frantically trying to explain. "I thought-- I mean, I _wasn't_ thinking-- I was-- I just--"

Mr. Luthor held his other hand up, palm out. "Stop."

Clark shut up.

Mr. Luthor looked him over grimly, then he lowered the poker further, the tip now pointing at the floor. Clark felt a horrible relief flood through him and he rocked forward slightly, peeling his back away from the hard, unyielding stone wall of the room. He let his arms slowly come down to his sides.

He watched Mr. Luthor pinch the bridge of his nose with his free hand, looking either irritated as hell, or like he was getting a headache, and realized that he wasn't off the hook yet. If at all.

Well, at least he wasn't going to get stabbed.

...Then he remembered the bridge, and the car crash, and paled, because... what if he _did_ get stabbed?

Clark felt sick all over again.

Then he realized that Mr. Luthor's very penetrating gaze was on him _again_.

He hunched his shoulders a little and slowly leaned back into the very solid wall behind him, again.

"Were you looking for me?" Mr. Luthor asked.

Clark's mind went blank.

"Huh?" he said, then winced internally as Mr. Luthor's eyes narrowed slightly. "Ummm... no?" he managed to get out without squeaking.

Mr. Luthor just stood there quietly, _watching him_ \-- and god that was just the _opposite_ of not getting noticed, it made his head swim with how _very_ the opposite of not-noticed this was -- and Clark tried not to squirm under his gaze and maybe only partially succeeded. ...Ok, maybe he totally didn't manage to _not_ writhe like a worm on a hook at all.

"I didn't think you would be here...?" he tried.

Mr. Luthor's eyes narrowed further, and his penetrating look did not match the sudden smile on his face _at all_.

"No?" he asked. Clark shook his head, not taking his eyes off him as he did.

He wasn't sure what exactly was wrong... was there something wrong?

"I suppose you're not used to anyone being here, then?"

Clark nodded in relief, relaxing a little. "Nobody is."

Mr. Luthor's smile widened marginally. "And who would 'nobody' be?"

"The town."

"Really?"

Clark nodded.

"The whole town?"

Clark nodded.

"Hm."

Clark relaxed a bit, his hands starting to come down.

"Well, I never would have thought the whole town would be so... captivated by the mansion grounds."

Clark shrugged.

"You certainly must have some interesting parties up here."

Clark blinked, feeling a little bit dizzy from the quick change in topic. "Oh, uh..." Clark rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a little embarrassed. "Well, we have the Corn Queen festival and Homecoming and stuff, but I don't think it's anything like you must be used to in--" Then he blinked. _Wait._ " 'Up here'?" He frowned. "Don't you mean..." And Clark trailed off, confused, because, well, 'down here' wasn't exactly right, because this was Kansas, and pretty level, so Smallville and Metropolis weren't exactly in a hill and valley from each other. 'Over here' wasn't quite right, either. ...Maybe 'out here'? Or 'this far west of the city'?

"Of course. I'm sure the manor must be a great attraction," Mr. Luthor said smoothly, sweeping his arms out in a vaguely castle-encompassing gesture.

"Uh." Now Clark was really confused, because, sure, everybody knew about the place and was curious, but it was always closed. "I... guess?" Wow, yeah, damn the guy's place with faint praise, why don't you? Especially since it _was_ kind of cool, getting to look at it close-up. "--I mean, it's kind of hard to see it from the road, though," he tried to explain.

Lex blinked at him. "Mmm, yes, I'd noticed that." Lex walked out into the center of the room, looking at Clark sideways as he not-quite-absently played with the fire poker, rolling it in his hands. "I suppose seeing it from the inside is a bit more... fun?"

"Well, yeah! It _is_ kind of cool," Clark admitted, trailing him at a distance, and taking the chance to look around. "Uh, except for the almost getting stabbed in the face part." Then his head snapped up as he realized what he'd said. "--No offense! I, uh," Clark stopped walking after him and shifted uncomfortably, looking away again and wrapping his arms around his torso. "I shouldn't have come here. I wasn't really thinking, and I didn't mean to disturb you or anything. I'm sorry." Because the way Mr. Luthor looked before, he'd been startled half to death, maybe worse than Clark had been, because Clark was _trespassing in his house._

Clark winced to himself. "I, uh, I should..." _go,_ before somebody decided to call the police on him. He edged backwards a little towards the door, until he remembered. --Sure, he was uncomfortable and wanted to leave. That would've been fine, and maybe he might have even found a way to somehow get away with it... except he still didn't want to go home -- couldn't face his parents -- and he didn't know where else to go.

He stared down at his feet for a moment and shuffled them a bit, feeling morose. When he looked back up to Mr. Luthor, though, the man was tilting his head at him almost quizzically.

"Oh? Leaving so soon?" Mr. Luthor said quietly by the fireplace, with the barest trace of a smirk. Unless it was just a trick of the firelight in the gloom.

Clark bit his lip and couldn't meet his gaze. "You... didn't exactly invite me in." And boy, was that true. Why hadn't he just kicked him out, or called the police, by now?

"Didn't I?" he said casually.

Clark's head whipped up, back to Mr. Luthor, startled. _He... what? --Me?! He did? Did I... miss something?_

_...Why is he smiling at me like that?_

"How did you get in?" Mr. Luthor asked him quietly, leaning the poker up against the wall next to the hearth.

"The front door was unlocked." And it really had been; he hadn't broken the lock.

Mr. Luthor pursed his lips slightly, then gave him a thin smile. "And how did you get onto the grounds?"

Clark bit his lip. "I kind of squeezed through the bars at the gate..." _literally_. He shrugged a little helplessly.

"You didn't see anyone around." It wasn't quite a question, but Clark felt a bit of panic.

"No, I--" Clark had to forcibly tell himself to calm down. "Was there supposed to be?"

"Mm," Mr. Luthor said noncommittally.

 _Oh shit._ If somebody had seen him when he was... --that was bad, way beyond breaking-and-entering bad. Oh _hell_.

"Hey, relax," Mr. Luthor said, walking up and putting his hands on Clark's shoulders. "It's fine. I just didn't know if they'd left for the day or..." He got a slightly twisty smile.

"Who's 'they'?" Clark couldn't help but ask.

"Oh, I'm not sure. I don't know them all by name, yet," Mr. Luthor said, waving a hand absently. Clark's attention was captured by it as it fluttered through the air.

He blinked and had to shake himself a little. Mr. Luthor was almost... _hypnotic_ , sometimes.

"But... you... didn't invite me?" Clark said, so unsure. He hadn't really wanted to ask, but he kind of had to anyway.

"I would have thought the truck an indication of an open invitation," he got as a reply.

Clark blinked at him blankly, and it took him a moment to remember the brand new truck sitting in their driveway. The one he couldn't have.

"The note, it... it said 'drive safely', not 'come over'?" Clark said as Mr. Luthor tugged at his arm lightly, drawing him down to sit in front of the fireplace as he neatly folded himself down onto the stone hearth, and Clark sank down next to him.

"Oh? Doesn't the idea of having your own vehicle suggest freedom and autonomous independent travel? It would hardly be appropriate to ask you over outright in a note your father would quite probably read, given his attitude towards me when he picked you up at the bridge."

At that, Clark sighed. He couldn't help it.

"What's wrong?" He tilted his head at him. "Wrong color?"

"What?" Then he realized what Mr. Luthor was asking. "Oh, god no! The truck is awesome! I wouldn't care what color it is!"

"Yet I feel as though I'm sensing a 'but', here."

"Dad said I can't keep it," Clark sighed out, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

Mr. Luthor blinked at him. "You drove it over?" And frowned a little more. "And you were going to leave it without telling me, or anyone seeing you? No explanation?"

"Huh?" Clark felt confused. "I... I didn't drive it over."

Mr. Luthor blinked at him, then grinned, laughed lightly, and clapped him on the shoulder, his touch warm. "Well, I'm glad you're keeping it."

Clark felt confused all over again. "What? No -- I really _can't_ keep it. Dad won't let me. --Seriously!" he added at Mr. Luthor's blank look. "He won't even take it for himself, and let me use the old one. He's probably gonna make me return it to you first thing tomorrow after school." Clark pulled his knees up to his chin and sighed forlornly. It really was an awesome truck.

"He really doesn't like me."

"He really doesn't like your dad."

"Yet he is judging me based upon my father's actions."

"No!" Then Clark actually thought about it for more than two seconds and grimaced. "...Well, maybe, but he said he wasn't." Clark looked up at him. "He said, and I quote, 'I just want to make sure that you know where the money came from that bought that truck.' "

Mr. Luthor was quiet for awhile, then propped his chin on a fist and neutrally replied, "I assume that he gave you some background as to our general finances and their source, then?"

"He said some stuff about people in town who lost big for trusting Lionel after he gave them big flashy gifts, way back when."

Mr. Luthor frowned at him a little. "A business deal is a business deal."

"I... I don't think that's what went down, sir," Clark tentatively put forth. "Dad made it sound like... like people got tricked and cheated. Or worse."

"What, no specifics?" Mr. Luthor asked with something that sounded a little like a snort. "The devil's in the details, you know," he said, waving his hand lazily. "--And please, call me Lex, not... 'sir'." He wrinkled his nose slightly and grimaced a little at that. "And _definitely_ not 'Mr. Luthor' -- that's my father," he said emphatically with a slight shudder.

"Um, ok, Mr.-- Lex."

" 'Mr. Lex' is right out, too." Lex added, eyeing him. "Just 'Lex'."

"Ok... Lex..." It felt a little weird, but also kind of cool. "Um, you can call me Clark," Clark said, remembering how Mr. Luthor -- _Lex_ \-- had called him 'Kent' earlier.

"Hm. Well, I suppose it _would_ be better than 'hey, you' or 'the young Mr. Kent', yes?" Clark must've made a face at the last one, because Lex added, "Well, now you know how I felt," with a knowing smile, that sort of included him in the 'joke', rather than laughing at him like he was used to from his classmates at school.

"Weird," Clark agreed, nodding, and got himself another small smile.

"So," Clark added. "Um. Not trespassing?" He asked, hopefully.

"Not unless you'd like to be." At Clark's emphatic shaking of his head, Lex laughed. "All right, then. All right!" he laughed at Clark's nervousness, patting a calming hand down onto Clark's knee once or twice, letting it linger there for just a moment. "If anyone asks, I gave you an engraved invitation," he said, low and conspiratorilly as he leaned towards Clark with a slight small smile, eyes sparkling with good humor.

Clark breathed a sigh of relief, and then they both stared into the fire for a bit... at least, they were until Clark suddenly realized what had been bothering him about the fire...

"Is that a gas line?" he asked, pointing it out.

"Yes."

"But... that looks like real wood." It even smelled like real wood.

"It is."

Clark turned to look at him. "What?"

"It is real wood," Lex said without concern.

Clark's eyes widened. He glanced between Lex and the fire a couple times, before he said in a rush, "Where's the nearest fire extinguisher?" At Lex's blank look, he rephrased: "Where's the kitchen?!"

"Out the door, turn right; down the hallway, on the left -- why?" Lex said, frowning up at him as Clark jumped to his feet in a rush.

"I-- you can't--" No time to explain, Clark moved for the door, then stopped, mentally cursing, as he turned and made a beeline back for the fireplace. He grabbed a block of wood out of the fire and jogged to the double doors, slammed them open, then ran for the kitchen, following Lex's abbreviated instructions.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex blinked up at Clark as he underwent a sudden transformation from a jumbled bundle of muted nervous misery to a tight ball of crackling purposeful energy.

He almost laughed after Clark had left the room, once he was over the initial shock, because, well, a native farmboy townie running around his castle with a _torch?_

He'd barely had time to stand up before Clark was back, pushing himself into the room backwards, his hands full of fire and extinguisher. He couldn't help but marvel at the instant command presence the boy had when Clark told him to "Take this," and handed over the makeshift wood-block torch.

He took it, frankly more than curious to see where the teenager was going with all this.

...Ah. Apparently a lack of fire in his fireplace. Enacted with a rather brutal efficiency, too.

He waited as Clark let out a sigh of relief and finally set down the fire extinguisher. It didn't escape his notice that Clark had needed directions to the kitchen to find and retrieve it.

He raised his eyebrows and gave Clark a look of patient waiting as the teen finally turned back to face him, expecting an explanation for the dousing of his perfectly lovely fire, which he'd gone to a lot of trouble to set up properly.

What he got instead was an accusation of: "Are you crazy?!"

Lex frowned. "No," he said, a little testily.

The boy apparently wasn't cognisant of his tone, nor was he done with his tirade. "So, what, you were _trying_ to blow the place up?"

Lex blinked at his, at a loss for words. "It was a fire..." he said slowly, because, really, he knew how to make explosions, and setting wood aflame _in a fireplace_ wasn't it.

"That's a gas fireplace! And you put wood in it!"

"So?"

The boy opened his mouth to argue, but then it morphed into a look that was utterly aghast.

"You... you don't..." Clark blinked and shook his head a moment. "Haven't you ever set a fire before?"

"I did just now, and it went perfectly well." _Up until **somebody** doused it with fire retardant!_ he thought angrily.

Clark stared at him, disbelief warring with incredulity. Incredulity and horror won out. "Oh god, you really don't know..." he said.

"Well, then, why don't you explain it to me?" Lex said smoothly, because, really, showing up uninvited without knocking, waltzing in like he owned the place and scaring the living daylights out of him? --That was one thing. He could forgive that easily enough; the boy had obviously not been trying to make trouble in his little petty adventurous jaunt. But putting out his fire right in front of him? That was insult to injury.

So was the look of murderous patience the teen seemed to have adopted. Clark plucked the torch from his hand and stuck it into the fireplace, holding it up away from the rest of the wood and illuminating... "See that there? That's a gas line." He turned his head up to look at Lex.

Lex nodded once at him to indicate he should proceed.

"Ok. I guess nobody ever told you this, but there are gas fireplaces, and wood fireplaces. You don't put real wood in gas fireplaces; they've got special fake logs for those with holes in them for the gas to siphon up through. The gas fireplaces are like gas stoves -- you only burn what comes out of the pipes." He pulled the torch out of the fireplace, held it up at his side casually. "You don't put wood in there around the gas pipes, because they... the heat... It messes them up, ok?"

"The pipes suffer heat expansion," Lex muttered, starting to get the tail end of the idea.

"Uh... Right! --Yes, that!" Clark nodded brightly. "And you definitely don't have the gas going at the same time, because the heat messes up the valves, too, and... and the fire could move back up the open line and--"

Lex paled. "I get the picture, yes," he stated, pinching the bride of his nose, because... _Fuck. This is the same common-sense crap I learned in Chem 101 with those damn bunsen burners._ It was official -- home-ownership really did _not_ suit him. _Why can't I just rent an apartment in town? Surely they must have a few?_ But that would probably entail besmirching the Luthor family name, and god knew Lionel wouldn't stand for that -- his own son, slumming with the masses. _Not that I didn't do that in college..._

Clark nodded again and bulldozed along, not privy to his internal dialogue. "There are some fireplaces? Where you can disconnect the gas lines and put in wood instead. But yeah, both at once is bad." He paused, then added, "We should probably go find the gas lines in the basement and close them off -- you might've damaged them, and you _definitely_ don't want a gas leak."

Lex sighed. He _thought_ he might know where the basement is. He rummaged around in his pockets for his keychain flashlight, not wanting to steal Clark's torch -- really, the medieval ambiance looked good on him, and coupled with the flannel... almost disturbingly so.

He flicked it on and then looked up into a blushing Clark's face.

"Problem?" he asked the teen.

"Um, right." The blush deepened and the boy glanced at his torch. "Electricity, yeah."

Oh. Lex stifled an embarrassed cough. "Ah, well, not so much," he dissembled.

"Huh?" said Clark. And then his eyes went wide.

"Ohmygodyou _don't have the place wired for electricity?!_ No _wonder_ nobody lives here!" the boy proclaimed, looking outright stunned.

Lex stared at him for a few tense moments, then did a mental facepalm. "It _is_ wired for electricity," he amended smoothly. "It simply... isn't on. Currently." And, really, finding out that the place had had the power, gas, and water turned off, and that they wouldn't be 'reactivated' for a week or so, had been a huge shock. He'd be making some calls tomorrow -- from the shit factory, because the mansion's landline _also_ wasn't functional at present, and he didn't get cell signal this far from Metropolis, or from the town. Hopefully he'd be able to speed that process along a bit with some judicious yelling, threatening-- ...and perhaps a little abject begging or outright groveling to the right and proper authorities. After all, civil servants tended to like that sort of thing... didn't they?

Frankly, he'd been relieved to find that there'd been enough residual natural gas in the pipes to start the fire in the fireplace.

Clark was staring at him oddly, and not in the why-are-you-so-bald? way.

That was... new.

"Uh... right... --Where's the basement?" Clark asked.

Lex slid his hands into his pockets and gave a Lexian sort-of shrug. It apparently took a few moments for Clark to translate, given the look of confusion he got at first.

"O-o-o-o-o-kayy. Well, I guess we should go looking for it, then...?"

And with that pronouncement, Clark turned and strode out the double doors, careful of the path of the fire extending from the flaming torch.

Lex tilted his head, then gave a little mental shrug -- because, well, why not? -- and tamely followed in Clark's wake, game for the attempt.

~*~*~*~*~*~

After a few false starts -- the likely-looking door in the kitchen had turned out to be a pantry, the _next_ likely-looking door in the kitchen had led to a root cellar unconnected to any other basement rooms, which had resulted in the pair of them trying most every other door on the first floor -- they _finally_ found the stairs to the basement at the opposite end of the house.

And the basement looked a lot like the first floor -- a long hallway, with lots of doors.

Clark sighed and started checking rooms, ever-careful of the flames from his torch. Because, hey, setting Lex's house on fire after more-or-less breaking in? Would be bad.

He blushed when he finally realized that Lex was basically just following him from room to room, rather than looking around himself. It didn't help when Lex turned off and pocketed his tiny flashlight, saying that, "Your torch suits the ambiance far better than mine."

It also didn't help when he offered the torch to Lex, and he casually raised a palm, saying, "Oh no, you carry it quite well, thank you. I wouldn't wish to deprive you of it."

He swore Lex must be laughing at him... except that he wasn't. And didn't. He seemed amused, but totally serious, too. Which was kind of weird, but also kind of cool. ...And kind of frightening in a way that made the bottom of his stomach do trickly-warm loops in his gut, because Lex was so _focused_. Even when Lex was looking around the room, he seemed ever-aware of Clark, too. It was like Lex was watching him, even if it didn't look like he was staring straight at him every single second of their exploration.

"I feel like Howard Carter," Clark blurted out at one point, as they were walking beside an underground pool, heading for the exit. The reflection of the flames off the water did strange things with the shadows and light.

"Mm, yes. 'Wonderful things'," Lex said without even a trace of mockery in his tone as he took the lead, striding forward ahead of Clark and casting long shadows in front of his torch.

Clark gave a surprised grin, and he saw Lex turn his head slightly, not quite enough to glance back over his shoulder at him, but... _Oh. How did he know that I...?_

That warm feeling in his gut did flip-flops again.

"Do you like Egyptian stuff?" Clark asked, really curious.

Lex did another odd shrug-that-wasn't-a-shrug movement with his shoulders. "I'm more partial to the ancient Greco-Roman studies, to be perfectly honest." He stopped and held the door back to the hallway open for Clark to step through. "I suppose medieval European military history isn't entirely outside my interest, either, though I suppose that might be self-evident from the decor," Lex said with a small wry smile.

"You had it shipped in?"

"No, it was here when I arrived, but I think I'll keep it," Lex admitted breezily, waving a hand.

"Do you do magic?" Clark blurted. At Lex's surprised look, Clark did a facepalm, which he belatedly tried to convert to running a hand through his hair, because, really, non sequitur much, Kent? "Uh, I mean, you sort of-- your hands--" Clark tried to emulate the sort of smooth flowing gestures Lex did... and failed miserably. "Yeah, ok, I totally can't do that, but... you know?" he asked hopefully.

Lex blinked at him, then honest-to-god looked down at his hands and turned them over once or twice, considering. "I talk with my hands?" he said, with an accompanying gesture.

"Yes!" Clark said, beaming, because that was _so_ what he'd been trying to say. "It's like... --how do you do that?" It was so... fluid. And kind of captivating. Clark wished he could do that.

Lex tilted his head and smiled up at him in a way that Clark felt like he wasn't quite catching the meaning of completely. "I don't know. I suppose I always have."

"Oh..." Clark said, feeling a little disappointed, though he wasn't really sure why.

"Magic?" Lex quieried.

Clark blushed as they entered the next room -- ok, wow, a small bowling alley? in the basement? really? -- and said, "Um, well, it's kind of like... the handkerchiefs thing? Out of nowhere? It's sort of like, you watch the hands and they flutter and flow around kinda hypnotic and then... lots of handkerchiefs... out of nowhere." Oh, he was so bad at this. Chloe and Pete usually did a lot more talking in their conversations, and he was usually along for the ride. This was difficult, and he wasn't even trying to be... cool, or whatever. Or at least not a dumb, silly, teenaged geek who always had his nose stuck in a book or his head in the clouds. _That's probably a total epic fail waiting to happen, trying that, anyway. It's not like I can impress him, all rich and from Metropolis and stuff,_ so why bother even trying to be better, cooler, different than he was?

And, the weirdest thing was, Lex didn't even seem to mind...

"Ah," said Lex, sounding like he understood. Then: "Hypnotic? Really?"

Clark could just hear the smile in his voice, even if he couldn't see it. He blushed again. "Uh, yeahhh," he admitted, ducking his head.

"Is that a bad thing?"

Clark was pretty sure he couldn't blush any brighter. He just shook his head, not trusting his mouth.

"Hmm. Good to know," Lex said warmly.

Correction. He totally _could_ blush more. Clark was pretty sure his cheeks were gonna burst into flames any second now, and not because he might be holding the torch a little too close.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex couldn't help but feel a little relaxed as he more-or-less treated himself to an impromptu tour of the castle grounds along with the young Mr. Clark Kent.

Honestly, he hadn't had this much fun since...

Hell, he hadn't felt this comfortable just talking and spending time with someone since even _before_ Duncan. And while Duncan had eschewed their so-called 'friendship' the moment Lex had found them a chance to try and get them out from under Oliver's bullying, Clark had _saved his damn worthless life_. --And then proceeded to scare the crap out of him in an unexpected late-night home invasion, but, well, details.

It didn't seem like Clark was trying to put on a front for him either, which was odd, because everyone he'd ever known -- besides Duncan -- generally did just that. Either they felt as though they were too good for him, or not good enough, and acted accordingly. Clark, on the other hand was just... Clark? Lex was finding it hard to define him, in more ways than one.

And he really did look good holding a torch. Flannel, denim, and canvas were not a toga, perhaps, but he might as well have been a Greek god for all his fine bone structure... or at least a marathon runner in the days of old.

Lex sighed silently as the next door offered up a room full of machinery, furnaces, and what looked to be other assorted large mechanical equipment -- perhaps part of the HVAC system? He certainly _hoped_ that there was already something better in place than fireplaces for heating, and openable windows for ventilation and air conditioning...

He was already halfway through making convoluted mental plans to try and entice the boy to come back and... 'hang out'?... sometime, when Clark finished surveying the room and had twisted all the various knobs and levers on copper pipes -- that were quite possibly the mansion's gas lines, in Lex's uninformed opinion -- to the 'off' position.

Lex waited for Clark to move back to the door and make his excuses to leave -- it was getting rather late, didn't most teenagers have curfews? -- except... he didn't. He moved farther into the room, taking the light with him, and walked up to a wall lined with large metal boxes and levers. And then started opening them up, looking them over, and _fiddling_ with them.

Lex frowned and moved farther into the room, about to accost him before he broke something, when Clark approached a setup that would not have looked out of place in a Frankenstein movie, and threw a large switch.

...At which point Lex felt his mouth drop as he heard the sputtering hum of electricity running through machinery, and with a barely-audible _bam!_ and _hummmm_ , the lights in the room promptly flickered on overhead.

"Hah! Got it!" Clark said triumphantly, looking up with utter delight.

"How...?" Lex asked, stunned.

"Oh, it's just, well, actually cutting off the power to someplace means somebody's gotta go out to wherever and physically disconnect them from the power lines. The electric company usually only does that if people aren't paying their bills and are still using the power for, like, months afterwards." Clark moved over to a set of smaller boxes and flipped the covers open one-handed, and started checking over the innards, and flicking little... -- switches? -- Lex saw as he peered over Clark's shoulder. They were all labeled, on-off, and there was a paper listing of switch numbers and different parts of the house on the inside of the cover plate. How... convenient?

"Since nobody's been here using any power, and everything was turned off..." Clark shrugged. "It's not like they're gonna send somebody out if they don't have to," Clark said over his shoulder to Lex.

"What are those for?" Lex asked, as Clark closed another box, and opened a third.

"They're fuse boxes. Different rooms have different lines for the power to all the wall sockets. You can turn the flow on and off to the different sets of wires through these," Clark explained absently. "And if there's a surge, or something tries to draw too much, it flips the circuit breaker here, and nothing shorts out or explodes, or anything, farther up the line."

"Oh." _How practical,_ Lex thought. "Does that happen often?"

"Er." Clark paused and glanced up at the ceiling, deep in thought for a moment, before getting back to the wiring. "Depends on the house, and how much stuff you have plugged in, I think," Clark said, throwing another couple switches, and looking up as more lights came on. Lex belatedly realized that they'd only had emergency lighting in the room, as he found himself squinting and blinking in the sudden glare.

"You're probably ok; I've never _seen_ so much stuff," Clark continued, waving at some of the large humming machinery in the corner. "Seriously, I've _never_ seen a generator setup like this before. You could probably power half of Main Street on this, and be fine." He paused again, then muttered, "Man, I hope this place doesn't actually _need_ as much as that, or you're power bill's gonna be absurd." He bit his lip and checked over the innards of the last fuse box on the wall quickly and carefully.

Lex tried not to laugh at the idea of not being able to pay an electric bill. But then...

Oh dear. Clark hadn't known about the power company from personal experience, he hoped.

"How old are you?" Lex asked belatedly.

"Fourteen," Clark said, as he trailed his fingers over a few more breakers, and flipped one or two more back 'on'. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-one," Lex replied, feeling a little out-of-his-depth because, well, hell. He'd thought Clark at least seventeen or eighteen, perhaps in his senior year of high school. But really, this capable at fourteen years of age? Good god.

"Oh." Clark finished with the last box, then turned to look at him. "Really?"

Lex nodded and slid his hands into his pockets, feeling a little ashamed at being so very ignorant at such worldly matters that Clark, on the other hand, seemed so very knowledgeable about to the point of easy familiarity.

"Wow," said Clark, wide-eyed. "So-- did you go to college? Was it ok? What was it like?"

 _Ah._ Something he could talk about. Lex regained steady mental ground and smiled as he regaled Clark with tales of college dorm life, and the trials and tribulations of earning his biochemistry bachelor's degree. Clark, in turn, handed him the torch and messed about with the byzantine system of water pipes on the other side of the room, while offering up questions and exclamations at the appropriate junctures.

"Ok," Clark finally said after a lot of looking around, and a little bit of knob turning. "I think this should be ok for now. I opened up the main valves to the house," he pointed to a larger set of pipes, "and the shunts to the water heater," another finger point, this time with a thumb, "so you should have hot and cold running water now, since the heater's electric, not gas. ...Um, you might actually want that swapped out once you've had somebody check the gas lines -- gas-powered water heaters are usually much more efficient than electric unless you get something really expensive, and they'll still work even if the power goes out."

Clark shrugged to himself, then continued. "--Anyway, I didn't open up the water valves to everything upstairs," he made a swirling motion with his pointer finger, "because I'm not sure whether all the pipes are ok after not being used for so long." He stopped and frowned a little. "I think I got a couple of the bathrooms and the kitchen sink, but not everything's labeled -- I stayed away from that stuff -- and some of it isn't labeled all that well. I kind of had to guess," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

"That should be more than enough," Lex said, feeling a bit relieved about what he considered to be the basic necessities now being available for his use.

"Maybe," Clark said, looking unsure. "I think we might need to check for leaks, though, just to be safe. And I'm kind of worried about that pool already being full, now that I think about it," Clark ended, worrying his bottom lip.

"There's an underwater spring that I do believe fills some of the pools on the grounds," Lex offered. "I've heard that is the case with the small one outside on ground level, but the one we found in the basement might be as well."

"I guess. But if it's leftover from whenever they were probably testing stuff out when they first finished building this place, then it's gonna need a heck of a lot of cleaning, though." Clark made a face.

"Is that why you thought that everything ought to be in working order?" Lex asked as Clark stood up from his crouch by a tangle of pipes.

Clark nodded. "Well, yeah -- you can't build a house and have it ok for people to live there if it doesn't pass inspection, and that means checking all the lights and electricity and water and heating and plumbing and, well, everything, to make sure it all works beforehand." He paused, then added, "Uh, unless it didn't pass and nobody could live there. --But you're living here now, right? You couldn't do that if the place wasn't ok!" Clark pointed out.

Lex managed somehow to turn a grimace into a smile, because, knowing Lionel... "True," he said mildly, while making a mental note to call the appropriate local authorities and have the grounds fully-inspected first thing in the morning.

"Right, see? There you go." Clark said, smiling. "Oh, hey, wait a minute -- hold that still," he added, and without explaining further, or, really, any warning whatsoever, Clark shrugged off his coat and slapped it about the top of the torch several times using both hands, with a 'fwap' 'fwap' 'fwap' 'fwap' 'fwap', neatly putting out the burning end.

And then the teen shook out his coat and wiped at the back of it with his hand a few times -- which really only served to smear the soot around a little more.

Lex looked at the charred piece of wood he was holding. He looked at Clark. He looked at the ex-torch again. He looked at Clark's coat.

"What?" Clark asked. "It's canvas; it'll wash," he said as he shrugged it back on.

Lex shook his head once and just had to let that one go because, really, that had been so incredibly _bizarre._

Then again, he had been wandering around an old Scottish castle relocated to the middle of Bumfuck-nowhere, Kansas, USA, with a local farmboy-hero and nothing to light their way but an honest-to-god older-than-medieval-style _torch_. Perhaps he should revisit his definition of 'bizarre'.

He followed Clark out, and watched him flick the lights in the hallway on, and the ones in the machine room off.

As they walked down the hallway towards the stairs back to the ground floor, Clark ducked his head into the room with the swimming pool and clicked on the lights, then retracted and clicked them off just as quickly.

"Uh, yeah. I don't think that's fed from an underground spring. ...At least, I _hope_ not," Clark said.

Lex quickly glanced in and performed a similar check when Clark wasn't looking, made a face at the green -- oh god, was that algae or was that _moss?_ \-- growing in the stagnant water and up the sides, and had to agree.

He wondered if the factory had a hazmat team that he could co-opt for about a week or so.

Or maybe an acetylene torch, a paint scraper, and thirty gallons of bleach. He wasn't picky.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark sighed in relief as they finally finished checking the rooms. They had found no real problems with the water supply.

The kitchen had been easy enough to test for a working tap, although the pressure took awhile to force the water through the pipes without air bubbles in the flow, and they hadn't been able to check for leaks properly, with the pipes not being exposed in the basement. But at least they hadn't seen anything horrible -- like gushing water -- so anything that was a slow leak was something that would have to wait on a morning check, anyway.

The bathrooms were dicey in a similar way. First, they had to head up to the second floor and try the taps in each sink to see which rooms had functioning running water. Then, they had to figure out which rooms those bathrooms were above. --This got a lot easier though, once Lex pulled out a layout of all three floors, the attic, and the basement levels -- apparently there were two of them -- that he said he had half-remembered having heard about earlier that afternoon from the workmen who were supposedly tidying up the place and helping him move in.

Clark thought about asking him why he hadn't mentioned it earlier when they'd been trying to find the basement, but then mentally shrugged it off, because Lex hadn't even been certain of the contents of the roll -- whether it was floor plans or just miscellaneous architectural drawings -- or where it had been in the library, so... well. That probably explained it, right there.

But, after trading off one person flushing toilets and running water down sink and tub drains, and the other checking the rooms underneath for leaks, they determined that there was nothing that couldn't wait until a repairman came by the next day -- one leak in a small empty room off to the side got a very large bucket under a very slow drip, but that was it.

They met back up in the library, and Clark felt a rush of relief as they threw a dust cover off of a couch, which Clark gratefully sank down onto with a sigh.

"So, Clark," Lex said, "I appreciate your informative thoughts on the town thus far, but..." he pursed his lips slightly. Clark wondered what might be wrong -- he hadn't asked anything weird so far, and they'd been chatting amicably. Clark had taken a turn at directing the conversation by telling Lex about Smallville and the surroundings, and answering questions. He could tell that Lex didn't really think much of the town, but he wasn't exactly offended or anything -- by comparison to Metropolis, Smallville just... wasn't much of one.

"You haven't said anything thus far about the LuthorCorp properties in town."

Clark thought about it for a second. "I haven't?" he frowned.

"No, you haven't," Lex said genially, coming over after folding up the dropcloth, and sitting down on the couch next to him, propping his head up with a hand, facing him. "What do you think of the fertilizer plant?"

Clark blinked. "Uh, well." He frowned slightly. "I don't know. I've never been there. I mean, I know where it is, but..." Clark shrugged.

"Really? You don't know anything about it at all?"

Clark screwed up his face in a thoughtful half-grimace. "Well... I know that some people think that it's polluting the town -- no offense. But, well," he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, "I don't think that's true."

"Why not?"

"Well, Chloe doesn't seem to think so, or she would've said something, or run with it and written something on it by now. I mean, her dad's been the plant manager for a year, so she would know."

"Written something on it?"

"She's a reporter. Well, in training. Sort-of. She's gonna be the editor of the high school newspaper from now on, even though she's a freshman like me. Don't ask me how she pulled that one off." Clark blew out a breath and tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling. "Maybe wore 'em down by asking a zillion times, I guess. I don't know. She's from Metropolis. Are all of you guys just bursting with energy, questioning everything and _all over_ stuff?" he asked, turning his head to look at Lex sideways.

"You think I'm bursting with energy?" Lex asked with a lazy smile.

"Ummm... --Ok, maybe that one's just a Chloe thing? But I swear, she _never lets go of stuff_ ," Clark frowned. "And she gets into _everything_."

"That's a bad thing?"

"It is when she pokes her nose in personal stuff nobody wants to talk about, that nobody else has any business digging into," Clark huffed, folding his arms. "I don't think she understands the concept of a 'secret', and if she ever tried to keep one? She'd probably explode." He looked at Lex. "Seriously. Little Chloe-bits. All over." He flung his arms out to demonstrate.

Lex smiled slightly. "Mm. I think that what you're describing might be a 'reporter thing', actually."

"Really?"

"I've run into a few in my time. They tend to be alike in that way -- little to no regard for personal boundaries or privacy."

" _Yes._ That's _totally_ it! _Thank_ you," Clark said, feeling relieved. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, then realized something and said, "Oh man, don't tell her you think she's a reporter for doing that, though, or she'll never let up on that stuff!"

Lex laughed. "My lips are sealed," he said with a smirk and a fluid key-lock-and-throwaway gesture.

Clark couldn't help but smile back. "So are mine," he agreed decisively, and garnered another laugh.

"I take it that she has delved into your secrets at some point, then?"

"God, no," Clark shivered. "Mostly 'cause I think she thinks I don't have any." _Which I am totally ok with her thinking, so long as she leaves me alone._

"Everyone has secrets, Clark."

"Yeah, _I_ know that, believe me, but some are worse than others." And then he blinked and remembered this afternoon, and the smile slowly slipped off of his face and he felt horrible all over again, blinking and blinking again. He slumped a little and stared at the floor and wasn't sure what to think, that being around Lex had helped him forget the whole him-being-alien thing -- was it ok to forget that, ever, now that he knew? -- and the his-parents-lying-to-him thing, and...

"Are you all right?" Lex asked, looking concerned.

"I... yeah." Then he grimaced and quietly said, "No."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Clark shook his head. "Really not a good idea," he said, just as quietly. It didn't even echo in the large expanse of the room.

Except... he really wanted to. Needed to. With somebody. Not his parents. And...

Lex was a really good listener. He was so _easy_ to talk to and...

"My dad lied to me," he found himself saying before he really realized what he was doing. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The change came on suddenly.

One minute, Clark had seemed fine, and the next...

The next, he was looking worse off than he had before, when he'd looked about to bolt earlier, when he'd said he should go.

Lex was worried, especially so when Clark changed his mind about wanting to talk about 'it'.

"Was it important?" Lex asked, because he couldn't really think of anything else to say just then. He didn't want to delve too deeply -- Clark had _just explained_ that he didn't like exactly that sort of thing, that he felt personal boundaries were important, not a minute past -- Lex didn't want to alienate him or otherwise push him too hard to have him close off now.

...certainly not when nearly-passive listening as a sympathetic ear seemed to draw out far more information than any direct, unrelenting grilling ever might.

And if there was one thing that Lex could be sympathetic about, it was lying, deceitful parents.

"Yes. Yes, it was. It was _very_ important," Clark said hoarsely. Lex reached out and stroked a hand across the back of Clark's head gently, and realized Clark was shivering. He shifted a little closer, and then again a little more when Clark leaned in to his touch.

He took a chance and curled his entire hand around the side of Clark's head, dragging his fingers through his hair in what he thought might be a soothing, stroking motion, pulled towards him lightly... and Clark just leaned up right against him and laid his head down on his shoulder, hiding his face in the crook of his neck. He was still shivering as Lex continued his stroking motions. Lex felt his erratic breathing and wrapped his other arm around him. Clark's breathing slowly, slowly evened out a little after awhile, and he uncurled a little.

Then, almost all at once, Clark slid his legs down and wrapped both his arms around Lex, almost burrowing into him, seeking comfort.

Lex nearly gasped at the full-body contact, and how _warm_ Clark was.

Instead, he just wrapped his arm around him a little tighter, and continued to gently run his fingers though Clark's hair.

 _I suppose it might be fair to say that personal space and _personal space_ are two very different concepts for this boy,_ Lex thought wildly to himself.

Frankly, he couldn't help but think that he had really needed a hug today, after the accident, and the forced-relocation, and everything else that had been dropped in his lap, and he hadn't even known it until Clark had needed one, too.

He took a deep, slow breath in, and then slowly let it out again. He turned his head and laid it down sideways on Clark's own, feeling Clark's hair soft against his cheek, and closed his eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When Clark woke up it was still dark out and he was laid out on the couch in the library of the Luthor mansion, tangled up in Lex Luthor's arms.

He blinked awake to see Lex looking back at him, eyes slitted barely open, a little like a cat's, before he casually blinked them wider.

They looked into each other's eyes, and... well, Clark knew _he_ didn't want to move.

So he tightened his arms a little and curled into Lex's chest a little more, deciding that he really wasn't awake yet world, so there.

Lex... returned the gesture.

Clark sighed and relaxed. He felt... good. Really good. Didn't even really know why, just that he did.

He felt more than heard a slight huff of amusement from Lex, and a hand stroking his hair again.

"You're a horrible liar, you know. Pretending to be asleep," Lex said quietly into the top of his head.

But Clark was too caught up on the first sentence to really parse the second.

"I'm a horrible liar?" he asked, suddenly feeling cold.

"Mm. Yes," said Lex. "I realized fairly early on that you hadn't been in my house before. You’re a bit of an open book, actually."

Clark frowned a little, his train of thought derailed momentarily as he tried to parse that. "Why would you think that I'd been here..." His eyes snapped open.

"Oh my god Lex, no. I-- Nobody comes up here, I-- oh god, you thought--? No, I--" Then he realized something and panicked, shoving himself away so he could look up at Lex better. "Lex, I-- I was really careful coming in tonight, _I_ didn't break anything, I swear, it wasn't me--!"

Lex sighed in response, then reached out patted Clark's cheek, saying, "Sh. I know."

"I--" Clark blinked, stuttering to a halt. "...You do?" Clark asked incredulously.

"Yes. Of course."

"But..." Clark felt almost uneasy, but not quite that. Something _like_ that. He wasn't sure. "But how... how can you _tell?_ "

"Besides you being a horrible liar?" Lex said, propping his head up on an elbow. He still sounded amused.

Damnit, this was serious. Clark got a little angry. He pulled away completely, pushed himself up, and looked Lex straight in the eye. "I want to know. How you know." He frowned when Lex blinked up at him. "Is it just me? Or can you tell with other people?"

"I can tell with most anyone," Lex said, perfectly seriously.

" _How._ " Clark demanded, because, god, he needed to know. He needed to know so bad it burned.

Lex looked at him, then slowly levered himself up on his forearm. Drawing out the words a little bit, slowly, carefully, he said, "You want to know so you can tell if your father lies to you again."

" _Yes._ " Clark shivered. "...No." He shook his head. "I want to know so I can tell if they're _still_ lying to me."

Lex blinked at him once, and straightened. "They both lied?"

Clark nodded, not trusting himself for words at that moment.

"Is that why you don't want to go home?"

Clark collapsed back down onto the couch cushions, nearly in tears. "You're not going to help me, are you..." he said dismally, not really asking, feeling lost and alone.

"Clark..." Lex said quietly. Clark closed his eyes, and he felt Lex trail his fingers over his forehead. "It's not that I'm not willing to help you--"

"Then teach me!"

"--but it's a double-edged sword," Lex explained patiently. "Knowing when someone is lying also requires that you be able to lie well in return, and--"

"Good, I need to learn how to do that anyway," Clark said shakily, feeling like he needed to cry. "I need to learn how to do that really, really, _really_ well," he said, his voice cracking at the last, because, god, that was why they hadn't told him, wasn't it? He couldn't lie right. Not _well_. Not well enough that, if he knew he was an alien, that he'd be able to _not_ have it written across his forehead like a burning brand that even a blind man could see. They'd really been trying to protect him _from himself_. And it _fucking **hurt**_.

Well, _screw that_.

He wasn't a _child_.

And he wasn't about to get himself alien-autopsied by some psycho freak jerkass by letting something slip around the wrong person.

He'd always felt like it was stupid, pretending all the time, never telling, and oh, why couldn't he tell? What was the big deal? He'd always asked, wanting to know.

Well, he knew better now, didn't he? He had his _good reason not to_ now.

_Inhuman, unwanted, tossed-away-like-so-much-garbage, alien **freak**._

He dimly heard Lex muttering soothing things to him. He hadn't realized he was shaking and crying so badly.

"Sorry," he croaked, wiping away tears half-blind. "Sorry, m'okay, didn't mean to..."

"Clark, Clark, no, it's all right, I won't tell, all right?" he heard Lex say. He heard the slide of cloth on leather and felt Lex's arms encircle him again, as he kept up the patter of words in soothing tone, "I won't tell anyone. I'll help, however you want me to, all right?"

Clark took in a shaky breath and slowly relaxed in Lex's arms again.

He shouldn't be around people. But he wanted to be around Lex. He felt _better_ around Lex.

He probably shouldn't be asking Lex for help. He probably shouldn't be here at all.

He really hoped Lex was telling the truth.

~*~*~*~*~*~

To say Lex was worried was an understatement.

He watched Clark fall into a fitful sleep in his arms again, and tried to make plans, but he didn't have enough information.

His parents had hurt him badly -- that much was certain. Lex didn't know them well enough to know if forcing a confrontation beteen Clark and his parents was a good idea, or bad. Depending on what Clark's secret was...

Well, Lex had a feeling that it might be related to the car crash earlier that afternoon. Clark had seemed... in shock, and a bit out of it, but not in nearly so bad shape as he was now. It was possible that Clark's revelation had come before that point, but Lex felt it unlikely. It might have had something to do with him as a Luthor, tangentially, if the direction of Clark's ramblings was any indication, but, again, that could just as easily lead back to the crash. And Lex had sworn that...

Well, regardless of the details to which he was not yet privy, Lex was not about to push Clark back into a family environment that was bad for him, possibly-invulnerable thick skin or not. There were other ways to hurt a person, many of which Lex had personally become well-acquainted with over the years. He didn't know Jonathan -- not really, not from a mere half-minute of interaction -- but he did seem strict, and easily biased at the least, quite possibly unwilling to change, let alone bend even the slightest bit to be accommodating to anything he found... disagreeable. Oh, Lex might not know _him_ , but Lex knew his _type_. He knew it _well_.

If what Clark was dealing with impinged upon those boundaries... No, Lex would not send him back to that.

The mother was an unknown factor; Lex hadn't met her yet.

What Lex did know was that Clark had come here, meaning to be alone, hiding from everyone. He hadn't gone to this 'Chloe' -- likely the daughter of one Gabe Sullivan, if he was remembering the factory employment documents correctly -- who would have ascertained something was wrong, probably taken the time to brow-beat whatever-it-was out of him, and quite possibly done something about it to help him, if she was any sort of friend at all. That Clark had not gone to her, and seemed to find her as something to avoid rather than a possible avenue of help, was rather telling.

Instead, he'd been crying on the shoulder of a near-stranger, who he'd 'met' only that day, under the least auspicious circumstances imaginable, and spent a mere handful of hours getting to know that night, also under less than auspicious circumstances.

Not that Lex minded.

He was just worried about how very bad this lie, and subsequent telling-of-truth, must have been, for Clark to be falling apart in front of _him_ , trusting _him_ , of all people.

It didn't bode well that he had basically signed on to teaching this fourteen-year-old how to effectively lie to his parents, nor that he was already thinking of ways to go about doing it.

Or that he might be finding the idea... enjoyable, in what was probably a very twisted way.

_Lex Luthor, defiler of youth._

Ah, well. If Lex couldn't bring Metropolis to Smallville...

...instilling some of its hard-earned lessons in one Clark Kent would surely be the next best thing.

Lex owed him his life, after all. This would be a small enough price to pay for it.

And if he did this, he'd certainly be seeing a lot of Clark more often, as well.

Lex smiled. He _liked_ win-win situations, oh so very much.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
